


Ballad of the Mighty Gabriel

by keylimepie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Archangel Gabriel (Supernatural), M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 05:31:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keylimepie/pseuds/keylimepie
Summary: What happens to archangels after they die? And can Sam Winchester help Gabriel to change it?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Song inspired fic, recommended listening: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzQYtpjMjSo

_I followed you down to the end of the world  
To wait outside your window_

Gabriel slowly became aware of existing. The first thing that he noticed was the murky grayness of the air around him. He didn’t notice much else. There didn’t seem to be much else. Awareness, yes, but no sensations. He went to stretch his arms, maybe crack his knuckles, anything, and then he noticed that he didn’t seem to have any. Or legs. Nothing to move, really. 

“Well that’s just…” he tried to open his mouth to say, but none of that was there either. 

After concentrating very hard for a time, he found that he could sort of see and hear, if he focused on a specific spot, but it never lasted for long. Flashes of the walls of the ballroom, the bodies strewn around. Flashes of the noise of rain on the roof. None of the bodies that he saw were Sam Winchester, nor Dean, nor Kali. Perhaps they’d gotten away after all. Nothing he heard was screaming or moaning, no indication of anything alive, in fact. This was perhaps not so promising. 

_The colours around me are fading away  
But I'll be waiting come what may_

Gabriel thought it must have been a long, long time before he could focus enough to really get a good look around. He found that he could sort of float, not a motion precisely, but move his consciousness around the building. He wondered if this was what it had been like when he was in his True Form. It had been a very long time, but somehow he didn’t think so. This was different. 

_Ghost_ was his thought as he looked down at the sad remains of his vessel. Did archangels get to be ghosts? None of us ever died before, he thought. Gabriel supposed that left him to be the test case. He looked at the crispy outlines of wings. Two wings. _Daddy, help,_ he thought. _I have no idea what’s going on or what I’m supposed to do. I just wanted to save Sam and his brother, was that so wrong?_ But there was no answer. There was never an answer. 

_I followed the stars and I sailed to the sun_   
I held it in my fingers   
Alone on the beach on my own out of reach 

Eventually, Gabriel figured out how to move his consciousness to other places. Quite by accident, really. He had been thinking wistfully about Crawford Hall and that first shy smile between himself and Sam. So deep was he in the memory that he could see the place. Then he realized that that was because he was there. 

Time seemed to be passing the same, while he was dead. He didn’t go back to that moment and see the two of them. He saw the new assistant professor who had that office now, the meetings with students, the new janitor. Nothing exciting. He could picture the years-younger faces of the Winchesters, though. He could regret, bitterly regret, that he did not approach them differently. What if he had taken Sam out for drinks and then told him all about angels and the Apocalypse? Sam would have understood, Sam would have worked with him to stop it. It had been written right there in the boy’s soul, plain as daylight to the archangel, and still he had not recognized, not back at the beginning anyway, what a rare thing Sam Winchester was. 

_I'd give you the world if you'd take my hand  
But you left me alone in the sinking sand_

Now that he understood a little better how to focus and move in space, he experimented constantly with pushing the limits of his abilities. He had to figure this out eventually. With the refining of this talent, he began to gain something of a shape again. Nothing like the corporeal body he had inhabited while hiding as Trickster, further still from the enormous construct of energy that had been the True Form of the Archangel Gabriel, but he started to feel like he was moving arms and legs again. He tried to form this into the familiar figure of his vessel, and after a time he started to think that he resembled that man again. Of course he could only sort of see himself, and no one had been able to see him yet. 

The most important breakthrough, though, was the day that he figured out that he could find Sam Winchester. 

It wasn’t like it was some new technique that he hadn’t tried before. He just… thought about Sam. Longed intensely for Sam, in fact. It was pretty much one of the main things he had been doing all along. But something was different this time. Maybe he had gained more power with all this practice. Maybe he was just getting stronger as time went by. With the overwhelming desire to just brush the boy’s forehead and secretly kiss at as he slept, as he had so many times, suddenly he found himself in a dingy motel room. Just like all those times before. 

Sam was injured. It must have been pretty bad; the boy looked absolutely ravaged. Dean was patiently stitching his brother’s hand with clumsy, ugly stitches. Gabriel ached for his former glory, to be able to heal the kid, to jump out and say “Surprise, Sammy! I’m back!” They were hunting Leviathans; Gabriel could not imagine how that came to be, but he knew a thing or three about those vile abominations. He could have helped them. Maybe he was bored from being dead, but he thought that he would have liked to help them. 

He soon pieced together that Sam seemed such a mess because of the aftereffects of Hell. So, it had happened after all, and then somehow he had been rescued. But what he must have endured at Lucifer’s hands! No wonder the poor kid was a mess. Gabriel wanted to scream with frustration at not being able to ease Sam’s misery. Gabriel realized that being dead was making him kind of obsessed with Sam Winchester. Though, if he was honest with himself, he’d been creeping along that path well before his death. 

_Show me the rules of the games you play  
I’ll be waiting come what may _

The ability to interact with the physical world was the hardest ability to gain. He watched Sam often and tried to channel his desire and frustration into the sort of energy that would allow him to touch, to move things, to create a breeze, anything. How did ghosts do it anyway? Why in all his years had he never considered the physics of ghost existence? Souls were strange, foreign, delicate things. 

When that awful woman used a magic spell to trap Sam in a sham marriage, violating his free will, violating the privacy of his body, Gabriel’s rage was enormous. The fury that would have leveled the city in the past was not even enough for him to slap the girl in the face. Thankfully Sam was eventually able to work it out and was freed. The chick even managed to recognize the error of her ways and redeem herself. Gabriel was usually in favor of that sort of thing but he found it hard to forgive this time, so it was just as well that he had no power. 

The old hunter Bobby got turned into a ghost himself. Gabriel was surprised to realize that he could not interact with the guy. He figured ghosts were supposed to be able to communicate with each other. He could totally see the guy, even before Bobby figured out how to interact with the living, but Bobby had no awareness of Gabriel whatsoever. Gabriel suspected that what he was was not precisely ghost. Kind of hard to be properly a ghost without a soul. Maybe he was just a weird little echo of his Grace. Maybe this was Archangel Hell, able to see all the shitty things happening to Sam Winchester but to never so much as offer him a soothing touch. 

It seemed that Sam’s propensity for getting into trouble, usually through no fault of his own, had not diminished after the Apocalypse and the stint in Hell. One day Gabriel faded into awareness in some dark street and Sam was being chased by crazy clowns. _Seriously, kiddo?_ Gabriel thought. Fortunately the clowns were quickly dealt with and Sam was essentially okay, though Gabriel could practically taste the fear coming off of him. And he still had no sense of taste. 

The younger Winchester’s emotional distress from his Hell experience was getting worse. Gabriel figured this out, ironically, the day he finally figured out how to interact with Sam. It hit him that the outbursts, the flinching, the one-sided conversations are because the boy was hallucinating Lucifer. “Oh, Sam,” he whispered achingly. Sam looked around, confused. Then he went back to fixating on the spot he had been looking at earlier, answering whatever shitty things the hallucination of Gabriel’s dick of a brother was saying. 

“Sammy! Can you hear me?” Gabriel tried again. Sam’s head pivoted once more, his face crumpled in misery. 

“Stop it. Please,” he whined. “What are you doing now?” 

“Sam. I’m not a hallucination. Please. Please, hear me.” He tried to reach out and stroke Sam’s face. He could see the ghostly outline of his arm, his hand, and he imagined that he brushed the kid’s cheek. But Sam gave no indication that he felt anything, or even that he heard those words. Eventually, Sam curled up on the bed and sobbed brokenly. Gabriel was sure then that this was Archangel Hell. 

_Wherever you run I'll be on your tail  
Whatever you're hiding behind your veil_

Gabriel tried talking to others. He talked to Dean, he talked to the ghost of their friend Bobby, he went out and found psychics and mediums and talked to them. None of them gave any indication of being able to hear him. 

He still couldn’t touch Sam. Sam seemed to hear him, sometimes, a little bit. But the crap with Lucifer breaking his brain… well, he didn’t need another asshole Archangel screwing it up further. Gabriel stopped trying. Instead, he watched helplessly as the kid completely broke down and ended up hospitalized. But he also watched with pride as Sam managed to help save some random chick, even in the middle of what was happening to him. 

Gabriel ached for Castiel when the young angel agreed to take on Sam’s burden, but he was also relieved to see Sam back to himself again. And deep down, the Archangel of Judgement knew that Castiel had it coming to him, even as he felt sorry for his little brother. 

The Leviathan thing seemed to be getting worse. And then Sam had been captured by vampires. Great, just great. Well, fortunately he was good at his job and the Winchesters got out of it quickly. 

That night, while Sam was lying in bed, Gabriel tried to lie down beside him and wrap himself around the hunter, sort of, in a wavy blobby not existing sort of way. “Kid, you’ve gotta stop getting yourself almost killed. It’s hell on my nerves,” he muttered without thinking. 

Sam stiffened. “Who’s there?” he said, hand reaching under the pillow. 

“Gabriel. It’s Gabriel. Sam! Please!” 

Sam sat bolt upright. “Where? You sound like you’re in my head.” His face suddenly hardened. “This was supposed to be over,” he said hoarsely with a shudder. “Why…” 

“It’s really me! Please believe me. Your head is fine. Sam… slowly been…” Gabriel felt himself flickering in and out. 

“Gabriel? Are you still there?” Sam asked anxiously. With a frustrated cry, Gabriel grabbed for the boy’s shoulders. Sam gasped at his touch, like cold electricity, and reached his huge hands to wrap them around the space in front of him where logic told him Gabriel must be. Sam pulled Gabriel toward himself with a burst of longing. 

“Hey,” he said to the golden haired archangel sitting solidly in his lap. 

“Hi,” Gabriel returned casually. “So um. How’s it going?” 

“Gabriel, what the hell just happened?” 

“I got sick of being dead?” Gabriel replied uncertainly. “I’ve been following you for so long, kiddo. Um, in the least creepy way you can possibly take that, if you don’t mind. I think you just… pulled me back to life.” 

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Sam said. “But I don’t see how…” 

“Me neither, kiddo. None of this was ever in the rulebook.” He flexed his fingers carefully, then cupped Sam’s cheek gently, savoring the warmth against his skin. Skin! He had skin again! 

“I’m sorry I failed you,” Gabriel said. “And that… that I didn’t get to…” He tilted his head and leaned forward, pressing a gentle, sweet kiss to Sam’s lips. “No more regrets.” 

Sam touched his mouth in bewilderment. “Okay. I mean… its okay.” Gabriel stretched and wiggled his legs. Still clad in the clothes Sam had last seen him in, every detail of him seemed to be the same. How could his vessel even still be… was it a vessel? Did Sam really bring him back or did God have a weird sense of humor? Why had Castiel never appeared in Dean’s bed any of the times he’d been resurrected? 

“Are you still an archangel?” Sam blurted out. “Do you know?” 

Gabriel looked thoughtful for a moment. He snapped his fingers and was suddenly holding a large ice cream sundae. 

“Seems like the most important functions are still there, yep. I’ll deal with your little Leviathan problem tomorrow.” He scooted off Sam’s lap and sat next to him on the bed, eating his ice cream carefully. He held out a spoonful to Sam but Sam shook his head. “I promise there’s no Leviathan goo in it,” Gabriel said cajolingly, and Sam accepted a heaping spoonful of the treat. They shared the rest of it in silence, just watching each other, then Gabriel made the empty bowl disappear. Sam reached out and grabbed Gabriel’s hand impulsively. He clasped it between both of his hands, rubbing gentle circles into the back of it. 

“Sam,” Gabriel whispered. “That touch. Feels so good. Haven’t been able to touch anything at all in such a very long time.” He reached his free hand to stroke Sam’s cheek and brush his hair back. Sam dipped his head into the caress, then down to meet Gabriel’s lips once more. 

“Let’s work on getting you caught up, then,” Sam said with a smile. 

_I'll find you.. Yes I'll find you..  
If I've got to be the man who walks the earth alone._


End file.
